Ennis has gone on to
be famous for many a stylistic trope in his American comics work that it’s hard
to separate out his 2000 AD stuff sometimes. But I think it’s safe to say he’s
always had a predilection for male camaraderie, cheap sex-based jokes, religion / god-bothering, movie
references (especially action films of the 70s and 80s), outsiders and, of course,
the comedic potential of ultraviolence. Not sure how often he brought up
buggery until he began on Preacher,
though.

Ennis has something of
an odd position in 2000 AD. On the one hand, he was part of a wave of hot new
talent that wrote funny / slice of life comics for Crisis. On the other hand,
he didn’t carry this across to create funny / slice of life comics for 2000 AD.
Well, he tried it once with comedy series Time
Flies, but frankly this just wasn’t very funny.

Telling us the joke is bad isn't always enoguh to redeem yourself.
Art by Philip Bond

Instead, he was tapped
early on to take over from John Wagner as the regular writer on Dredd, as well as taking over Chopper for the Megazine, and also
continuing the world of Strontium Dogs
post-Johnny Alpha. These were all far better than Time Flies.**

Pertaining to comedy, but not actually funny.
Art by Philip Bond

You'll have to buy it second hand.

In interviews, Ennis
is pretty down on his 2000 AD output, but he’s too hard on himself. He didn’t
rack up more than 200 episodes in a prolific 3-year stint because he had no
talent! His first published work, Troubled
Souls, was much praised in Tharg’s Nerve Centre, who also pushed the
reprint collection pretty hard. Ennis thinks so ill of it he managed to secure
the rights and refuses to reprint it. You can certainly tell it’s an early
work, but it’s not terrible. It’s actually kind of charming in lots of ways –
for those who don’t know, it’s about young men (and women) in Belfast getting
pissed and playing pranks on each other and generally avoiding stereotypical
storylines about the Troubles until, of course, the same stereotypical
terrorism / family honour stuff creeps in.

True Faith, his second project in Crisis, was brilliant, and remains one of my
favourite of his stories. It’s nothing like Preacher,
but there’s a lot of the DNA of Preacher
in it. Obviously the main plot is about angry men ailing against God, devoutly
faithful people and what this kind of faith can do to them - although the real
meat is the acutely-observed everyday stuff. It’s also an early outlet for
Ennis to explore the horror and banality of violence – something that went on
to inform most of his Dredd output,
although for the most part that was played purely for laughs, where True Faith plays it for shock value and
not a little bit of actual intelligent point-making, as well as for laughs.
Highly recommended.

People sitting around talking: it shouldn't be good comics, but Garth Ennis makes it work.
Art by Warren Pleece

Ennis today is a
writer known very much for writing original stories using his own characters
and ideas. He didn’t do much of this for 2000 AD, one imagines partly because
he was offered Dredd, so didn’t have much time left over, but I can’t help but
think he was canny enough not to want to hand over rights to his original
creations. Good for him!

It’s certainly the
case that his work with existing characters on 2000 AD far outshone his
original ideas. I’ve already made the joke twice, but Time Flies, technically his first published work in the comic, was
a trendy comedy that had charm but not wit, and much of that charm came from
artist Philip Bond’s way with facial expressions. Honestly, breaking down the
characters and situations it kind of works as a sketch show – with a hit rate
of about 1 good joke to 5 bad ones - but the characters were perhaps a bit too
broad. Time Flies II was advertised a
few weeks after the first one finished, but didn’t appear for something like
six years – partly because the artist didn’t want to draw it, and partly
because the editor didn’t want to print it. Arguably, it was funnier than the
first, and if nothing else it produced this delightful panel from one-time
wonder John Beeston:

It's right out of a Jeunet/Caro film.
Art by John Beeston

By complete contrast,
Ennis exploded onto Judge Dredd with Death Aid, essentially predicated on the
same broad humour as Time Flies but
for whatever reason it worked. Charity events are as solid a target for satire
today as they were 25 years ago, I guess. World War II flying aces, not so
much. More to the point, the story also dared to pick up a dangling Wagner/Grant
plot thread from years earlier.

Who doesn't love a killer with a smile?
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Actually, it wasn’t so
much a dangling plot thread, more an old story that Ennis (and no doubt many
other readers) remembered fondly and thought worth another look – the Hunter’s Club. Ennis used this trick
a few more times – A Magic Place
being the best example, but also bringing back seldom-mentioned Judges Perrier
and Dekker (if only to kill them off rather cheaply), but even having a go with
classic villains Judge Death and PJ Maybe. One could argue that this sort of
thing, while crowd-pleasing (I enjoyed it, anyway) is a bit lazy, but I think
he did it respectfully enough. More importantly, he didn’t actually do it very
often, setting a trend for future Dredd
writers who would go on to mine the strip’s history sometimes, but not too
often. And, to be fair, he wrote a good year’s worth of all-original Dredd
material, inventing his own villains with them. Some of them armed with
multi-purpose potato guns.

There's also a 'mash' setting...
Art by Steve Dillon

Ennis’s other main Dredd trick, again borrowed from Wagner
and Grant, was to take something out of pop culture and throw it into a Mega City
setting. Honestly, I think these were often his weaker stories, even as they
could be some of Wagner& Grant’s best e.g. Twin Blocks wasn’t as funny as The
Secret Diary of Adrian Cockroach. Probably the most fun Ennis had in this
vein was with two stories about Marty Zpok, murderous rockist, although the
music and TV references are very of the 90s. Artist Dermot Power did an
extraordinary job of predicting the existence of actor Michael Shannon, though,
who’d be perfect in that role.

Ennis is an equal opportunities satirist - the poptimist idiotsZpok kills are genuinely annoying, but Ennis reserves his true bile for Zpok himself.
Art by Dermot Power

All in all, Ennis’s
Dredds were good enough to get him the chance to write two separate epics: Judgement Day (with an e) and Helter Skelter. Neither of which are the
best of Dredd, but both of which provide fannish glee. Judgement Day remains an exemplary cross-over, combining Judge
Dredd and Johnny Alpha.

Who's the hardest?
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

If you ignore the overall plot and just enjoy these two
going through the classic motions of fighting each other then working together,
it puts many a superhero crossover to shame, even the Dredd/Batman stuff. Helter Skelter saw Dredd tackle villains
from his own and wider 2000 AD history, but this tine the nostalgia factor
couldn’t make up for the lack of excitement inherent in the story.

Over in Strontium Dogs, Ennis was trying
something very different – being serious. Monsters
was, in essence, another story about angry young men hanging about in bars, and
felt nothing like any old Strontium Dog
story. Phenomenal art and mutant design from Steve Pugh lifts the material, but
even without that it’s another interesting look into the young disenfranchised
mind, a continued concern for Ennis. Bringing back the Gronk as a
short-tempered gun-toting revenge seeker pushed back into the world of comedy,
and somehow paved the way for Ennis to bring in some pretty horrific imagery as
Gronk and Feral hunt for the body of Johnny Alpha.

In an Ennis comic, sooner or later everyone meets their maker.
Art by Nigel Dobbyn

Ennis can do heartfelt, too.
Art by Nigel Dobbyn

Johnny Alpha in a flesh-made hell. In context, this is John Smith level horror.
Art by Nigel Dobbyn

I have no idea if he, or
indeed Tharg or subsequent writer Peter Hogan had any idea where the story was
supposed to be going, but it was never less than solid comics.

Defiantly not solid
comics, but rather experimental comedy weirdness, was Sleeze ‘N’ Ryder, Ennis’s idea of how to get a spin-off story out
of the world of Dredd. At the time, I found it to be almost entirely indulgent,
a bit gross, and not very funny. Nick Percival was very much finding his feet
as an artist, too. But on re-reads it holds up rather well, with the two lead
characters playing off each other nicely. Also, 1980s Arnie quotes never get old,
apparently. Where other weird comics of the 90s were pretentious as hell, this
is just plain goofy, and all the more enjoyable for that.

Ultraviolence in comics = reliable laughs

Ennis’s second
Dreddworld spin-off, the Corps, comes
across as the man writing on autopilot. It’s competent, joke heavy, and
properly violent. Basically, it’s a lot like much of Ennis’s subsequent work
for the US
market, although it might just be even less subtle. I mean to say, it liberally
uses Tarantino-esque tropes and has its lead character actually called Tarantino.
If you’re in the mood, though, the commitment to hardman characters and
grimacing is pretty funny.

Men of violence with erudite conversation: Tarantino in a nutshell.
Art by Paul Marshall and Colin MacNeil

Soon after this, Nick
Percival stepped up his game about 20 levels to paint Ennis’s last major Dredd
work for many years with Goodnight Kiss.
A much more sombre affair, it pushed Dredd’s own hardman status pretty far,
while also probing at that favourite weak spot, innocent victims of Mega-City
One’s harsh mutant laws. It was a good note to bow out on.

Guess who gets the kiss-off?
Art by Nick Percival

For someone who has
gone on to international and long-lasting fame and glory, Ennis’s legacy as a
2000 AD writer isn’t all that strong. Partly it’s because he was still learning
his trade on the page, following a weekly publication schedule, don’t forget!
But also I think he was hurt by setting a trend he didn’t necessarily mean to.
Ennis’s Dredd was very much Wagner’s Dredd, only he liked to push the violence,
the image of Dredd as ultra hard, and the overt bullying nature of the Judge
system perhaps a bit more - certainly with less subtlety. The likes of Millar,
Morrison and others who handled Judge
Dredd next took this specific baton and ran with it, looking for pure
comedy without reinforcing the underlying idea. Not Ennis’s fault, but I think
he has been somewhat tarred with the same brush.

Harsh sentencing: a little goes a long way.
Art by Ian Gibson

And so, on to Preacher, a story I first encountered in
the Judge Dredd Megazine, and which I believed to be original material for that
publication. Obviously I was wrong, but who cares? It remains one of the
all-time great comic series, and dash it all if it wasn’t the product of two
minds steeped in 2000 AD, both as readers and creators. With time, its juvenile
qualities stick out more, as also the shock value diminishes, but the sheer
number of classic characters live on, and the overall storyline is kinda great.
How very 2000 AD to have a hero with a superpower who only ever uses that power
once every 10 issues or less, and even then, as often as not in service to some
kind of horrible joke.

Ennis has become one
of many creators who hasn’t come back to 2000 AD in a long time – but in his
case, I get the impression it’s as much because he’d want to find the right
project for the comic as for any more selfish reason.

Judge Dredd: Death Aid, School Bully, A Clockwork Pineapple, Rough guide to Suicide, A Magic Place,
Raider, Judgement Day, The Taking of Sector 123, The Kinda Dead Man, A Man
named Greener, Monkey on my Back